From Road Warrior Voices at USA Today comes this piece of advice for frequent travelers…Don’t throw out your boarding pass.
Turns out the innocent looking lines and fuzzy pixels of the bar code actually contain a treasure trove of passenger information that could easily be exploited by shady characters who want access to your accounts.
That’s exactly what Brian Krebs discovered in his blog Krebs on Security, after a reader did some sleuthing on a friend who’d posted a picture of his boarding pass on Facebook. Using a free online reader, the amateur detective was able to decode the bar code quickly. The information uncovered included his friend’s name, phone number, frequent-flier number and flight information, all of which can be used to access an account and take effective control of it. According to Krebs, the information is also enough to make it easier for an attacker to reset the PIN number used to secure the account.
